Modern behavior by females disguised as feminism isn't attractive

http://www.NewsAndOpinion.com |
If you watch a lot of cable television, you've probably seen the
ads, especially late at night or early in the morning. The "Girls Gone Wild"
videos promise to show you coeds behaving badly on the beach during Spring
Break or getting down and dirty at Mardi Gras. The formula is simple: find a
group of nubile young things drunk out of their heads and induce them to
pull up their T-shirts or pull down their shorts and expose themselves to
anyone willing to fork over $19.95 for the privilege. The most recent
incarnation features gangster rapper Snoop Dogg hawking fresh, young flesh.

Call me old-fashioned, but I just can't imagine what these girls
were thinking when they agreed to "show off their assets," as one knock-off
video boasts. These young women aren't pros  they are not part of the
pornographic underworld  but ordinary teens and twenty-somethings who one
day will be wives and mothers. One young girl, who was 17 at the time she
allowed herself to be photographed topless, has already sued the producers
of "The Guy Game," a video game featuring females in various stages of
undress. Her suit claims she did not give a "valid or enforceable consent or
release" for photos to be used by the video game makers. "Plaintiff is still
a teenager and wishes to attend college, develop her career and be active in
her community and church." Good luck.

What is most shocking about this phenomenon is that we're not
all that shocked by it. Modesty used to be considered a natural female
attribute. No more. Just take a look around next time you're at the mall.
With warm weather on the way, belly buttons will be popping out everywhere,
and thighs will be very much on display, even in church. Back in the day, a
pair of tight jeans was enough to earn a girl a bad reputation. Now slutty
has gone Main Street.

A recent report by the Independent Women's Forum (IWF)  "Sex
(Ms.) Education: What Young Women Need to Know (But Won't Hear in Women's
Studies) About Sex, Love, and Marriage"  suggests that feminism is at
least partly to blame. Female sexual license has become a central tenet in
modern feminism, as the IWF documents in its study of feminist academic
literature. Popular feminist textbooks, notes the study's author Carrie
Lukas, "celebrate feminism's role in changing social mores by increasing the
recognition of women's sexuality, bolstering its acceptance, and encouraging
greater access to birth control." Early feminists burned their bras as a
symbol of their liberation. Could baring their breasts be the newest
symbolic act of young feminists?

As Lukas demonstrates, however, libertine behavior exacts a
heavier toll on females than males. Women are more susceptible to sexually
transmitted diseases than men, for example. A woman is eight times more
likely than a man to contract HIV from a single sexual encounter and four
times more likely to get gonorrhea when exposed. Women are also more likely
to suffer serious damage, such as sterility or cervical cancer, from STDs.
And the risks are not just physical.

Many studies show that promiscuous behavior entails greater
psychological costs for even the most "liberated" women. One anthropologist
cited by Lukas hypothesizes that the uncomfortable feelings many women
experience after casual sexual encounters may be a warning system for women
not to engage in behavior that would have been "maladaptive in earlier
evolutionary eras. Casual sex with men unwilling to invest in them or their
offspring is a prime instigator of such negative feelings."

The girls baring all in these low-budget videos may think that
guys like this kind of behavior. But as Steven E. Rhoads, author of "Taking
Sex Differences Seriously" notes, "Men often prize promiscuous sex in the
short term, but they want faithful wives. . . . If a man finds a woman hard
to get, he will sense that she is more likely to be faithful after
marriage." Plenty of men and boys will buy the "Girls Gone Wild" videos, but
they're not likely to invite the amateur strippers home to meet Mom.

JWR contributor Linda Chavez is President of the Center for Equal Opportunity. Her latest book is "Betrayal: How Union Bosses Shake Down Their Members and Corrupt American Politics". (Click HERE to purchase. Sales help fund JWR.)